Using iCloud Drive Shared Folders in macOS Catalina

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how, in macOS Catalina we'll be able to share entire folders in iCloud Drive. 

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So other cloud storage systems have had the ability to share a folder full of files for awhile now. But this is going to be new to iCloud Drive in macOS Catalina and iOS 13. We've had the ability for awhile now to share a single file but now you'll be able to share a single folder which means there could be a bunch of files in the folder that are shared and users can add files and modify files in that folder.

Here I am in Catalina. Of course I'm using the beta here but it should work the same in the final version. Now in order to have a shared iCloud Drive folder you have to create it, of course, in iCloud Drive. You can't create it as a local folder on your hard drive. So you want to choose iCloud Drive here on the left. Here are all the folders I have in iCloud Drive. I'm going to create a new one that I'm going to use as a shared folder. I could create it inside of anyone of these folders. But I'm going to create a new one just to make it simple.

I'll go to File, New Folder and call it Shared Test.  There is my new folder. Now it's not shared. It's just a normal folder.  How do I share it? It's a little counter intuitive. There's no big panel or system preference for setting iCloud Drive shared folders. Instead you Control click on it or you use two fingers to click on your trackpad or however you bring up your context menu. Then here you'll see Share and you've got the standard things like being able to share the folder by Mail and such. In addition to that you've got Add People. That's all you simply need to share this folder.

So we'll select Add People. It brings up this control here which is similar to how a lot of Apple's apps allow you to share a document. So you get to choose how you alert people that you're sharing this folder with them. If you're not that concerned about that right now you can just go to Copy Link. It's kind of like the don't alert anybody option. But you can use one of these. Basically send a message right now letting them know that they've got access to a shared folder. 

The important thing here is all these shared options. You can set who can access and set it to only the people you invite or anyone with the link. If that's the case then the link that you copy will be something that you can send out to anyone. You don't have to basically add people to this folder. Anybody with that link can access it. So let's stick with Only people you invite. Of course they're going to have to have Apple ID's and using iCloud for this to work. Then Permissions. You can allow them to make changes or only view the files. So let's do real sharing here and allow everybody to make changes. 

So we'll do this. We've got it set to Messages and I'm going to hit Share and now I'll be able to send out this link and send it to a specific person I want to invite. Let's send it out to my demo account. I'll hit Send. That will set them up as a shared user for this folder but also it will send them that message with that link.

Now to really test this out let's add a file here. So I'm going to run TextEdit and I'm just going to create a new file and Save it to that folder there. So I'll save to iCloud Drive and there is my Shared Test folder and I'll call this Test 1. Great. So now I've got a shared test folder that's shared and I've got this Test 1 file in it which I haven't set it to be shared or anything. I've just placed it inside the Shared Folder.

Okay so now I've switched to another user. This could be another computer, another person on the other side of the planet and I don't see anything yet in iCloud Drive. But if I go to my Messages app I'll see I do have a text message from me. It's asking me to open this shared folder. So when I click on this here, this is just that link, what it's going to do is it's going to ask me if I want to open this Shared Test folder. Then it will open up that folder and I will see it here. In addition notice that it got added to my iCloud Drive folder here. So I had four iCloud Drive folders before and now I have a fifth one that's Shared Test and it opened it up for me as well. So I could go in here and I can see what's there. There's that Test 1 file. Double click it and open it. It will open up there in TextEdit.

Now, as a test here let's add a line to this file. I'll Save it. Now I've altered a file that was created by that first user. In addition I'll go and create a new TextEdit file and I'll save it to that same location. I'll call it Test 2. Now I've got two files there saved. Notice a few things here. You've got these little indicators here saying Shared by Me and Modified by Me. So you have these indicators that are next to the file showing you what's going on with the file. You can see if it was created by you, if it was created by another person who is sharing this folder and if you've modified it. Basically the last action that took place on that file.

So here I am back in my first user and I can see here that the Shared Test folder now has both of these files in it. I can open up the first one. I can even see in the preview there that it's been modified. There's the second file that was created by that user. If I look at it in List View here I can see Modified by and there's my name and Shared by. Both of these accounts are using my name so it's kind of hard to tell what's going on but you get these little indicators here so you know if the file has been changed since the last time you changed it.

If I want to turn sharing off I can just go back, Control click, go to Share, go to Show People is what it says now. I see a list here. There's me as the owner. There's this other user. Click this button here and I can change to View Only or I can Remove Access from them. I can also change the general share options as well. So you have the ability to completely Stop Sharing something or Copy that link after the fact. You didn't have to worry about getting the link there when you set it up. You can copy it now and you can paste it somewhere, say a collaborative site for people at work or something like that, to be able to get access to all those files. You could also add new people there very easily. 

You've got the same functionality in iOS 13. There, of course, you need to use the Files app. But you can tap and hold on a folder in iCloud Drive and you have the ability there to add with all the same options. Now if you're using multiple devices and you've got a Mac, say, with Catalina and then another Mac that's running an earlier version of Mac OS, you can still see this folder in iCloud Drive. You just can start sharing it, and you can't accept a sharing invitation. But the files there will still be updated. It's just appears to you as a normal iCloud Drive folder. I'm not sure how robust it will be if you're going to be modifying files other people are also working on.

Now a lot of us have been using other cloud systems like Goggle Drive or Dropbox for this kind of thing. So this doesn't really add anything new for us except the ability to do it in iCloud Drive instead. A lot of people are using these other systems just for this one feature. So they'll be able to now have everything that they do in iCloud Drive.